A Glimmer Of Hope
by FallenAngelForever
Summary: They don't know where each other is, they don't even if each other is alive. But can 10 years of cruelty reunite six people?
1. Whose fault?

Notes: This is my first friends story so please be nice. I do like criticism and reviews though. This story will take place ten years after the finale. This first chapter is just a bit of a prologue, so it doesn't really take place during any time. Please review!

Disclaimer: I don't own friends.

Ten years earlier they had left for coffee.

That was probably the worst mistake of their lives.

Because that was the day the friendship fell apart. It seemed that Monica and Chandler's leaving for Westchester tore them all apart. Their reliance on that one apartment was so great that none of them even realised it. So it all broke into many little pieces.

But whose fault was it really?

Was it Rachel and Ross's?

They were the ones who started the fighting at Central Perk. They were fighting over stupid things. But that soon turned into fighting over serious things. In an instant, the whole gang was involved in the fighting. Eventually Rachel couldn't take it anymore and decided to leave for Paris. She took Emma with her. Heartbroken Ross could only cry to himself as he watched the woman he loved leave with his only daughter. Of course he didn't know that they had left for Paris. All he knew was that both were gone, and there was little chance of ever having either in his life again. Depression swept over his body over the years and every night he dreamt of where they were and what their lives were like. He could only pray that they were happy without him and the other friends.

Was it Chandler and Monica's?

They were the ones who were leaving after all. Ten years of friendship and love were solely based in Monica's apartment, and they knew that they couldn't recreate those memories in the suburbs. So why did they move? For the sake of their children to lead a happy life in a happy neighbourhood. But the sake of their children didn't matter once they got into the fight. Because the fight had resulted in the Bing's divorce. Splitting the children up for what could be the rest of their lives. Monica had left the country and moved to Canada with Jack, and Chandler stayed in Westchester with Erica. Both broke off contact with the rest of the friends, even Monica and Ross no longer spoke.

Was it Joey and Phoebe's?

They were the ones who realised their true feelings for each other at the one time the gang was still hanging together by a thread. But this only pushed the gang farther away and the thread soon broke. Joey and Phoebe continued to see each other, but it was not as friends, it was as an affair. It was not an easy one to hide, and when she got pregnant, she told him it was Mike's and that she should stay with her husband so they could look after the baby. Joey took off to Los Angeles, where he became a movie star. He no longer had the time to speak to Phoebe because he was always in photo shoots and such. He just figured that life was treating Phoebe and her baby well. But it was not. When Mike found out that this baby was not his, he left his wife to the streets of New York, where she struggled. She couldn't find work, and ended up as a prostitute with a son, begging for any kind of food or shelter anyone could give them.

So whose fault was it?

It was everyone's. All of them had spread themselves apart, and all of them had ruined the special thing the six of them had shared.

But the tables were turning, and a small glimmer of hope was starting to appear. But would these six people find this glimmer? And if so, who would help them find it?


	2. Reunited

Disclaimer: I don't own it. If I did, I would be rich.

He's sitting in a back alley, waiting for his mother. Its past dinner, and he's been sitting there all day, waiting for his mother, as she had instructed him to do last night. She was supposed to meet him at lunchtime, but she still hasn't arrived. It's not the first time she's been late, it's just her work. She tells him where to meet her the next day, and she runs off with some man, often not coming home until late the next day. He just assumes it's what all mommies do. But how can she explain what she does every night with a stranger to her nine year old son? She can't. Because she's a hooker and she beats herself up over it everyday. She used to have it all, now all she has is a little pink backpack with a few belongings in it and a son.

The wind's picking up and he really wishes he had something to cover himself with, but he doesn't, so his frail body shudders in the wind. His cold is getting worse and he coughs for what seems like several minutes. Finally he looks up and sees his mother standing there, watching him. Slowly, the frail child gets up and hugs his mother. He doesn't see her wince in pain from the impact of the bruises hidden under her clothing. "Hey, honey, sorry I'm late. Look, I brought a sandwich and a blanket." She had stolen both from last night's costumer's house. Her greasy blonde hair blows in the cold wind as she wraps the blanket around her only son. He's extremely pale and is at least twenty pounds underweight. She often doesn't sleep because she's too worried if he's going to make it through the night.

Several hours later, a man walks out of his apartment and onto the streets of New York. Its quite chilly out, it usually is in November. He's out for his nightly walk, a technique his psychologist taught him to help him forget her. After eight years of staying in his apartment, his parents wasting all their retirement money on him, and his son staying back from university for him, he's getting out. Every night he walks past all sorts of different people, showing him that the world isn't just him and her, its all sorts of people, living all sorts of lives. From the homeless to the millionaires, everyone makes mistakes, he just made one that took away his love and child.

As he walks past, he sees a woman. She's got a small child next to her, a very sick child, and blonde hair. He can't see her face from where he's standing, but she looks very familiar. Almost too familiar. He walks around to the other side of her and almost lets out a gasp. No, it can't be, how did she end up like this? The child's staggered breathing sounds worrying, he should go to the hospital. The man takes a deep breathe and does what any good friend would do, he wakes her up.

Her blue eyes turn towards him, this man looks very familiar to her, slightly paler and skinnier, but none the less, familiar. Suddenly his name pops into her mind, can this seriously be him? What's he doing here? He looks at her and says only two words.

"Hey Pheebs"

She only stares at him. He even remembers her name! But why is he talking to her? Shouldn't he be mad at her for ten years ago? Finally she replies.

"Hey…Ross"

"Come on, we're going"

His voice shows concern, and she softly speaks.

"Where?"

"My place."

"Why?"

"Because you're my friend and I'm not going to let you stay out here in the freezing cold! Its not right and you deserve much better! How would you react if you saw one of your friends in your condition? Wouldn't you help them?"

He's yelling now. Why does she always have to be so stubborn?

"I'm fine Ross, really I am. I don't need help, I've survived like this for ten years, and I can survive like this for ten more."

"Maybe you can, but will he? He looks like he won't even make it through the hour! If you're not going to do this for you, then will you at least for your child?"

He points towards the child, still sleeping despite the arguing going on around him. Phoebe thinks, he's right, she knows her son won't make it for much longer, she doesn't he'll make it to his tenth birthday. Maybe she should go with Ross.

"How do you know he's my child?"

"He looks like you."

"Well I think he looks like his father"

For some reason they both laugh.

"So are you coming?"

"I guess so."

He helps her up, as she is still sitting on the pavement, she has her son in one hand, and her backpack in the other.

"Do you want me to carry the backpack?"

"Sure"

They walk in silence until Phoebe decides to speak.

"hey Ross?

"ya?"

"thanks"

**Okay, so what do you think? Please review! I really like ideas on how to improve my writing, so if you have a suggestion, do tell!**


	3. Photo of A Man

Disclaimer: Sorry to get your hopes up, but I don't own friends. I'm trying to persuade my mom to buy me the DVDs though.

She's sitting on the couch in front of the TV, watching some game show that she doesn't even understand. If her mom wasn't in the room she'd have the English subtitles on, but she doesn't want her mother to know that she can't understand the language. You'd think a girl born and raised in Paris would know how to speak French, but she can't. It's just too complicated. She rarely speaks to her parents because of this. It's the only language they want her to speak. She's failing all of her classes except for English and Math, she can't make sense of anything else. Her parents are unaware of this fact, they're too tuned out from her life to know.

This is not what a little girl named Emma wants her life to be. She wants both her parents to be happy, not for her father to come home late, with lipstick smeared across his face, not for her mother to be so down all the time. She wants to be able to make friends, to be able to communicate with people. But it's just too hard, she doesn't know why, but she has serious problems.

Her father's just stepped into the house and once again he looks like he's definitely been up to something. He doesn't even bother to hide it anymore, that he's seeing another woman. The tall man sets his belongings on the kitchen table, grunts at his wife, and walks down the hallway to his bedroom, where nobody knows what he does. Nobody wants to know, it's probably something so sick and perverted that even the world's biggest pervert would find it disgusting. Soon after he leaves, Emma's mom announces that she's going to go to bed now. She walks down the hallway to her room, which is across from her husband's room because she won't dare sleep in the same room as him. It's only 10:36, Emma decides its time to take a trip to the attic.

The attic. Its Emma's place that she spends all of her time. Really it's only a small room above her house filled with boxes. But the boxes are filled with artefacts from a time when she was little and her family was happy, when everything was all right. There are pictures of her parents smiling and pictures of her playing. It's artefacts from a time Emma wishes she could remember, but unfortunately it all had to fall apart when she was just a small child.

Today, Emma has hit the jackpot, a new box with a label on it that doesn't make any sense to her at all. She has no idea what it means and why it is there. The box only says two words on it, two little words that she has no clue as to why her mother would write them on a box of crap.

The box says New York on it.

Slowly the eleven year old opens the box, and inside she finds pictures. It's just a bunch of pictures. She lifts one up to her face and stares at it. The picture is of a man. He's tall, has black hair, and is holding up a model dinosaur. He looks slightly familiar, and Emma wonders who he is. She turns the picture over to see if there's anything written on the back, and sure enough there is.

And in Emma's mother's messy handwriting it reads:

_This is Ross._

_Ross is an asshole._

_It's all his fault that I'm never going to have contact with my family and friends again_

_It's all his fault that I'm never going to return to New York again._

_Everything is his fault._

_I hate him._

_But I love him at the same time._

_Is that even possible?_

_We have such a huge history together its not even funny._

_Like, we dated_

_Then he slept with some other woman._

_WE WERE NOT ON A BREAK PEOPLE!_

_Then a few years later one drunken night gets me pregnant._

_That's the one thing that I thank him for._

_Without him little Emma would not be in this world today._

_But now she's never going to know her father._

_Because he screwed things up._

_I hope he goes to hell._

Emma looked at this piece of writing for what seemed for ages.

Her father wasn't really her father, this man was her father.

She wasn't born in Paris, she was born in New York.

Her mother had kept important secrets from her.

Her life was spiralling down at only eleven years of age.

Emma was now crying, what could this man – her father, do something worse enough to push her mother away from the people she loved. Why didn't her mom keep this from her? Was this why her mother was so zoned out all of the time?

Emma paused to notice that she wasn't the only one crying in the room. The sobs were faint, but quite noticeable.

Emma turned around to find her mother looking over her shoulder, tears rolling down her face.

**Please review! I like reviews! And I like ways to improve my writing! Don't hesitate to tell me about anything I'm doing wrong!**


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